"Always be closing."

I have witnessed this being enacted on several occasions and frequently watch the film to firmly embed the love of language within it in my mind. This work won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and rightfully so. It centers around a "down times" real estate agency in Chicago during a recession. Properties are not selling, and the company devises a sort of contest to motivate its salesmen to work harder. However, it lies at the core of a neo-liberal system, where the ones selling the most at that time are given the few available "prime" leads. The less capable guys, those trying to break in, newbies, or older men down on their luck and having a "bad streak" - because it operates in streaks - have the odds stacked against them, the cards are marked.

After two days in the office, there is a break-in overnight, and the leads are stolen. But, hey, the contest is still on. I understand that you might be a literary reader or someone who reads romances for pleasure, and you might wonder who would want to read about a real estate office in the eighties, especially when none of them are truly admirable in any way?! But you do! You just didn't realize it until now. Listen to it or watch the amazing movie version with Jack Lemmon.

Set in Mamet's Chicago, where he worked in a real estate office during the sixties, this piece captures the (male) Chicago language rhythms and American business talk and turns it into poetry, much like Harold Pinter does in The Caretaker or The Birthday Party or Betrayal. Or Albee's Virginia Wolff. It's as good as my other favorite Mamet work, American Buffalo, vulgar, crisp, and crackling with wit and working-class desperation. It's in the territory of The Death of a Salesman or Seth's Clyde Fans salesmen.

Who cares if Mamet is politically conservative now or that I disagree with much of what he has to say in his non-fiction. The man can write.

Always be closing, my friends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO_t7...

Nighthawks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LYn1...

Always be Quarantining, a parody with American Girl dolls:

https://www.thewrap.com/kathryn-hahn-...

For me to have more, you must have less.

Therefore, a person can only succeed in the event of the failure and misfortune of others.

.....

The play was bitter but fascinating. I took a breath. On the advice of Mohammad Agha (the administrator of the library group), I imagined myself as a theatergoer and tried not to distance myself from the scenes :)

The play was about the war of power, sexual harassment, and Chinese dishes in the workplace. Of course, it has deeper analyses that are also written in the introduction, and I don't have the courage to repeat them here.

The interesting part: I received a gift from a smart gift giver (^.^)

.....

I want to sigh a little and record here what my situation was like on such days in the future.

My grandmother and grandpa got corona. My grandmother's condition is very bad, but the hospital won't admit them. I can't do anything and I'm going crazy with worry. For my student's father, cancer was diagnosed, and I don't know how that child wants to deal with it. My husband cheated on a close friend of mine, and we got caught in the dilemma of whether to tell him or not. We don't want to be traitors either, but... the economic conditions are horribly bad. Several of my friends have become unemployed and their official income has become zero. Now the problems related to myself and my life that can be a poem remain...

There is no hope, I can't imagine any future, and I know that most of you are the same.

If only it were possible to commit mass suicide like lemmings at least.

I have never had any liking for Mamet. There is simply no appeal to his work for me. And these guys, ugh.

A truly good actor has the ability to bring forth meaning, depth, emotion, and nuance. However, when I am merely reading the script, none of these aspects are clear to me. This perhaps explains why two different acting schools did not invite me back. The movie was actually quite good.

But even with a brilliant cast, they would still be doing Mamet, and that would not be enjoyable for me in any way. I much prefer stories where women make up half of the world's population and are counted as people. This preference of mine becomes even more resolute as I age towards being a crone.

Your experience and opinion will surely vary.

Library copy.